BAR | Bay Area Registry

Contemporary Painting in Papua New Guinea: Mathias Kauage and His Family
2024-03-30 - 2026-03-15 | de Young – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
Mathias Kauage (ca. 1944–2003) is acclaimed for his boldly colorful paintings of a world radically changing around him in the late 20th century. This exhibition features four paintings from our collection by Mathias and his family, on view for the first time. During his lifetime, Mathias experienced dramatic societal shifts — not only during the decades under colonial Australian administration but also after Papua New Guinea achieved independence in 1975.
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Leilah Babirye: We Have a History
2024-06-22 - 2026-05-03 | de Young – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
Born in Kampala, Uganda, and based in New York, Leilah Babirye is known for her highly expressive, ambiguously gendered sculptures in ceramic, wood, and discarded objects. Reclaiming ceramic and wood-carving traditions from western and central Africa, she hand builds her ceramics, firing them with expressive glazes, while she whittles, scorches, and burnishes her wood sculptures. As a final touch, she adorns them with wire, bicycle chains, inner tubes, and other found metals and materials. The sculptures, which range in scale from towering totemic forms to busts, talismans, and masks, are portraits of her LGBTQ+ community. Babirye’s work speaks to the power of reclaiming personal and cultural identity through artistic practices, historical narratives, and cultural traditions.
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About Place: Bay Area Artists from the Svane Gift
2024-08-10 - 2026-07-05 | de Young – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
This exhibition is the second in a series highlighting contemporary Bay Area artists in our collection. The installation explores how artists relate to their environments through place: place as the physical land, place as heritage, place as the imaginary, and place as belonging.
Several artists examine climate change and its local impact. In Saif Azzuz’s Lo’op’ (It burns) (2021), he draws the color palette from maps of the 2021 droughts and fires in California. Other artists use found materials not only to address ecological issues but also to add layers of meaning, such as in Guillermo Galindo’s Listo (Ready to Go) (2015), made from a broken bicycle and chair he found along the US-Mexico border. And others play with figure and ground: Clare Rojas’s Walking in Rainbow Rain (2021) is a meditation on disappearing into one’s environment.
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Ancestral Visions: An Installation by Chelsea Ryoko Wong
2025-02-07 - 2026-02-01 | OMCA | Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Fashion, family histories, and personal identity intersect in a new installation at OMCA by Bay Area artist Chelsea Ryoko Wong. Wong’s energetic and colorful paintings, drawn from both real-life events and her imagination, depict busy, rhythmic scenes of people going about their daily lives. For this project, Wong’s paintings take inspiration from dresses owned by six 20th century Chinese American women, whose clothing and legacies live on in OMCA’s collection. Ancestral Visions features paintings along with a selection of the fashions that inspired them.
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Students on Strike: A New Installation in OMCA’s Gallery of California History
2025-04-09 - 2026-05-31 | OMCA | Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Students on Strike is a new installation opening in the OMCA Gallery of California History. The installation explores the enduring legacy of student activism at San Francisco State University by comparing the 1968-1969 student strike that established the nation’s first Black Studies Department and first College of Ethnic Studies to the recent campus protests against the war in Gaza. Through historical and contemporary posters and photographs, the intimate feature shows how students have consistently demanded justice and accountability from institutions, then and now.
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Women of Afrofuturism
2025-05-17 - 2026-09-27 | Harvey Milk Terminal 1, San Francisco International Airport, SFO), Terminal 1,, San Francisco, 94128
Afrofuturism, an artistic and sociopolitical liberation movement, examines the past, questions the present, and reimagines the futures of Black people. The term was first coined in the 1993 essay “Black to the Future” by writer Mark Dery. Afrofuturism explores the Black experience through a combination of science fiction, magical realism, mythology, history, and technology in genres ranging from literature and music to fashion, film, and visual arts. Afrofuturism may incorporate a range of components—from outer space to the natural world and popular culture.
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Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain
2025-07-18 - 2026-03-01 | OMCA | Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain navigates the braided histories of displacement, resistance, and resilience within Black American communities in Oakland and the East Bay. Through new commissions in art, architecture, and archival research, the exhibition traces how these communities have creatively resisted dispossession and reimagined spaces of home and belonging.
Drawing inspiration from the legacies of West Oakland and Russell City, Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain pulls from both OMCA’s permanent collection and loans from local repositories to trace the rise of these communities and their subsequent displacement. In response to this history, the exhibition presents three unique perspectives from an artist, Adrian Burrell; an architect, June Grant with blinkLAB architecture; and an archive, the Archive of Urban Futures and Moms 4 Housing. These installations reflect the ongoing struggle and success in reclaiming and reshaping self-determined spaces in the face of systemic violence, erasure, and urban renewal.
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Virtual | AllMachines
2025-07-20 - 2025-12-30 | [ Virtual ], CA
AllMachines simplifies choosing heavy machinery with its comprehensive and reliable resource hub. Covering all models and brands of tractors, forklifts, harvesting, hay and forage equipment like combines, headers, balers, rakes, and tedders across the US, our platform provides extensive details on dealers, specifications, and features. With downloadable manuals, expert user reviews, and in-depth model insights, AllMachines gives you everything you need to make informed decisions and select the right equipment for your needs.
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Bay Area Then
2025-08-01 - 2026-01-25 | YBCA | Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street (at 3rd Street) , San Francisco, CA, 94103-3138, United States
What does it mean to live with possibility? To live in a moment when artists and citizens reject fear and find power in discovery? For those who came of age in the Bay Area with the apocalyptic uncertainty of nuclear proliferation and the AIDS crisis; the devastation of the Loma Prieta earthquake and the Oakland firestorm; the audacious acquittal of LAPD officers Koon, Wind, and Briseno and the disembodied destruction of the first Gulf War; the road was bleak. And yet the energy in the cultural sector at the time was electrified.
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MAKIBAKA: A Living Legacy
2025-08-01 - 2026-01-04 | YBCA | Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street (at 3rd Street) , San Francisco, CA, 94103-3138, United States
MAKIBAKA: A Living Legacy boldly celebrates the culture, contributions, and presence of the Filipino community in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood and Bay Area. Presented by SOMA Pilipinas in collaboration with YBCA, and inspired by the Filipino term for collective resistance, MAKIBAKA brings together contemporary artworks alongside community-held objects, memories, and movements.
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Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread
2025-08-06 - 2026-02-01 | BAMPFA, 2155 Center St, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
“Without any formal training in embroidery or weaving, I often became the subject of ridicule, with people jokingly asking whether I stitched my works with my toes instead of my fingers.” —Lee ShinJa
Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread is the first North American survey of the work of the historically under-recognized Korean artist Lee ShinJa (b. 1930, Uljin, South Korea; lives and works in Seoul).
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New Work: Sheila Hicks
2025-08-09 - 2026-08-09 | SFMOMA, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
For nearly seven decades, Sheila Hicks has created groundbreaking works that redefine the expressive possibilities of fiber as a sculptural form. Based in Paris since 1964, she incorporates natural and synthetic materials at a range of scales from intimate weavings made on handheld frames to monumental installations that inhabit architecture.
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Art Wall / Stephanie Syjuco: Present Tense (Roll Call)
2025-08-13 - 2026-06-28 | BAMPFA, 2155 Center St, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Debuting her largest wall installation to date, artist Stephanie Syjuco (b. 1974, Manila, Philippines; lives and works in Oakland) presents Present Tense (Roll Call). Referencing the classroom routine of announcing one’s presence, the exhibition explores radical pedagogy in the politics of education. Syjuco’s practice spans from handcrafted textiles to archival excavations, interrogating how photography and archives shape racialized narratives of being and belonging.
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Paul Klee + Ray Johnson: Typofacture
2025-08-23 - 2026-04-01 | SFMOMA, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Writing functions not only as language, but also as a visual and even tactile form. Famed artist and educator Josef Albers imparted this idea to his students at Black Mountain College, a former liberal arts school in North Carolina, where artist Ray Johnson studied from 1945 to 1948. In an exercise called “typofacture,” Albers asked students in his design course to create drawings mimicking printed or handwritten text. After observing textures on surfaces — like speckles on a wall or patterns in a raked garden path — they applied the concept to printed text, which bears the imprint of its production, whether by hand or machine.
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Rooted in Place: California Native Art
2025-08-26 - 2026-12-06 | de Young – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
Part of the reimagining of our Arts of Indigenous America galleries, this is the first in a series of exhibitions that highlights specific regions of Native California. This installation explores the interconnections between art, ceremony, and the land in the Karuk, Yurok, Hupa, Tolowa, and Wiyot communities of northwestern California. The exhibition presents collection highlights alongside major loans, acquisitions, and commissions by contemporary artists.
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Arts of Indigenous America
2025-08-26 - 2028-08-31 | de Young – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
Celebrating the vibrancy and diversity of Indigenous American art, this new presentation features beloved collection highlights alongside major acquisitions and commissions by contemporary artists. In the most extensive reinstallation of this collection in 20 years, each of the four refreshed galleries explores a different aspect of the theme “Relationship to Place.” Developed with Native scholars and in consultation with communities of origin, the project centers Indigenous values and voices. Works spanning over a thousand years of history in all types of media challenge expectations about what Native art is and can be.
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Rose B. Simpson: LEXICON
2025-08-30 - 2026-08-02 | de Young – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
This exhibition brings together two seemingly distinct art forms: Pueblo pottery and classic cars. In 2014, Rose B. Simpson, a mixed-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, refurbished a 1985 Chevy El Camino, transforming it with a black-on-black Tewa pottery motif. Simpson titled her work Maria in honor of renowned artist Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1887–1980), who popularized the distinctive black-on-black style. Ten years later, this exhibition debuts Simpson’s second customized car, a 1964 Buick Riviera painted in vibrant polychrome.
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Hula Class for Seniors
2025-09-05 - 2025-12-19 | Harvey Milk Cultural Arts Center, 50 Scott St, San Francisco, 94117
New Hula Class geared for Seniors and Beginners (open to all).
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Object Oriented: Abstraction and Design in the BAMPFA Collection
2025-09-10 - 2026-07-12 | BAMPFA, 2155 Center St, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Object Oriented: Abstraction and Design in the BAMPFA Collection explores how artists have represented, reshaped, and reimagined familiar objects, drawing attention to the role of design in our everyday lives. This exhibition encourages acts of close looking, asking viewers to question their immediate recognition of what they see. In this way, an object that might at first appear to be a chair could also be considered a sculpture, a stand-in for a body, or simply a piece of metal.
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Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty in a Sparkling Show
2025-09-14 - 2026-04-04 | Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
⭐ Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty has arrived in SF Bay Area! This beloved tale is brought to life through classical dance, stunning choreography, and beautiful glow-in-the-dark costumes. Get your tickets for Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty in a Sparkling Show in SF Bay Area!
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Jitish Kallat: Covering Letter (Terranum Nuncius)
2025-09-19 - 2026-03-23 | Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Jitish Kallat’s installation Covering Letter (Terranum Nuncius) engages with sounds and images launched into space in 1977 as a cosmic greeting from humanity. Encoded in the Golden Records (gold-plated phonograph LPs) carried by NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 and now traveling over 13 billion miles away, these messages were conceived as a “time capsule” meant to last beyond the potential extinction of our species and planet, as well as an introduction to humanity and life on Earth for potential extraterrestrial recipients.
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The Jazz Room: A Journey to the Heart of New Orleans
2025-09-21 - 2025-12-21 | The Palace Theater, 644 Broadway, San Francisco, 94133
⭐ Come on down to The Jazz Room in San Francisco! With a mix of carefully chosen classics and spontaneous improvisation, this feel-good live music performance takes you on a journey to the roots of this revolutionary genre. Get your tickets now for The Jazz Room: A Journey to the Heart of New Orleans in San Francisco!
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The Jury Experience: An Immersive Courtroom Case
2025-09-26 - 2026-01-17 | Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
⭐ Step into the heart of a high-stakes trial with The Jury Experience in San Francisco. In this live theatre show, YOU are the jury—the power to deliver justice is entirely in your hands. You’ll examine every piece of the puzzle, from witness testimonies to forensic data, and ultimately decide: guilty or innocent?
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Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love
2025-09-27 - 2026-03-01 | SFMOMA, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
For over six decades, Suzanne Jackson has created lyrical, awe-inspiring paintings influenced by her deep respect for the natural world and continual belief in the connection between all living things. Jackson’s life has been driven by a search for creative freedom and a bohemian spirit indebted to the San Francisco ethos of the 1950s and 1960s in which she was raised. Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love — the first retrospective devoted to the full breadth of her career — celebrates her groundbreaking artistic vision through more than 80 paintings and drawings from the 1960s to the present that emphasize her innovative use of color, light, and structure to expand the parameters of painting and illuminate beauty, peace, and love.
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Art of Manga
2025-09-27 - 2026-01-25 | de Young – Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park | 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
Manga — Japanese comics and graphic novels — have become a global phenomenon. Featuring rarely presented original drawings by major artists, this exhibition showcases the world of manga from the 1970s to today. The exhibition explores manga as a powerful medium for visual storytelling, highlighting themes across genres, from friendship to sexuality to the human condition. Looking closely at each artist’s narrative worlds and creative processes, the exhibition also spotlights manga’s cultural impact today and possibilities for the future.
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UNBOUND - Art, Blackness & the Universe
2025-10-01 - 2026-08-16 | MoAD | Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105, United States
UNBOUND: Art, Blackness & the Universe is a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the intersections of Blackness and the cosmos. Curated by Key Jo Lee, MoAD’s Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Public Programs, the show invites visitors to reimagine Blackness not as fixed or earthbound, but as infinite—expansive, unknowable, and cosmically rich.
Inspired by Lee’s essay, “Gesturing Toward Infinitude: Painting Blue/Black Cosmologies,” the exhibition asks: What if we approached Blackness with the same wonder we bring to the universe? What if, like a black hole or distant star, Blackness could be a site of mystery, power, and transformation?
Featuring a global and intergenerational group of artists—including Lorna Simpson, Rashaad Newsome, Gustavo Nazareno, Harmonia Rosales, Didier William, and many more—the exhibition spans painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Works traverse the historical and the speculative, the scientific and the spiritual.
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Continuum: MoAD Over Time
2025-10-01 - 2026-03-01 | MoAD | Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105, United States
Continuum: MoAD Over Time is a landmark exhibition marking the 20th anniversary of the Museum of the African Diaspora. More than a retrospective, Continuum introduces MoAD’s next frontier, showing how the museum has been both foundational to the Bay Area’s cultural landscape and an increasingly vital global venue for art of the African Diaspora.
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Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural
2025-10-04 - 2026-02-08 | Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 Third Street, San Francisco, 94107
Centered around Judith Schaechter’s latest project, Super/Natural, this exhibition explores the universality of natural elements, patterns, and ornament as vehicles for meditations on beauty. The central stained glass structure, also titled Super/Natural, is her largest project to date, designed to accommodate a single viewer inside. Created during her residency at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, this piece reflects her study of biophilic design and its impact on human consciousness.
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Wunderkammer: The Collection of Susan Beech
2025-10-04 - 2026-02-08 | Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 Third Street, San Francisco, 94107
After a lifetime of collecting art jewelry, Susan Beech’s collection reflects the distinctive personality of its owner. The Beech home is full of custom display cases, each showcasing an array of jewelry of various styles and functions. Together, they evoke 18th century Wunderkammern, or cabinets of curiosity.
Traditionally, a Wunderkammer housed objects that not only displayed wealth but also embodied humanist philosophies aimed at deepening our understanding of the world. These collections functioned as object-driven pedagogies, with treasures encased in glass and hidden within drawers.
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Rave into the Future: Art in Motion
2025-10-24 - 2026-01-12 | Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Rave into the Future offers a space of joyful connection and community through a blend of music- and dance-inspired video, sculpture, photography, and room-sized immersive installations by women and queer artists from the West Asian diaspora.
In recent years, Asian artists, DJs, and communities have been at the heart of a resurgence of electronic music-based dance parties across the globe. Meanwhile, music from West Asia has experienced a surge in worldwide popularity, connecting new audiences with the ongoing dialogue between tradition and innovation in the region’s diverse musical genres.
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